Thoughts on Prismacolor

Helleborus x ballardiae 'Pink Frost'

This week, one of our class assignments involved a colored pencil plant portrait. The original request was for a rose, plant and all, but growing roses are in short supply in a Pacific Northwest February. I really didn't like the idea of using a de-prickled florist's rose, so I found a nice blooming hellebore instead.

Hellebore (also called Lenten rose, among others things) is one of my favorite plants. We never had them back in the South, and maybe that's one reason I'm so taken with them. In the middle of winter, when nothing much is happening in the garden, here come the hellebores. Their colors are so unique, so minor-key: greenish purples, reddish-grays, greenish-whites. It doesn't hurt that there's so much lore surrounding the hellebore; their ethnobotanical history stretches back for centuries and spans multiple continents.

Capturing the full range of color was a real challenge. I'm not sure I could've done better with watercolor, or any other medium. Possibly a strong, expressionistic oil in bold strange tones? But the colored pencil did okay with the tonal range, especially the purplish-browns. The greens suffered, I think.

In fact, the whole painting isn't as strong as I'd like. Hellebores are so tough and have such a leathery, sculptural presence; colored pencil has always seemed to me a bit too delicate for many subjects, and this is one of them. It's a bit saccharine for a flower once described thusly (Quoted from theGoGardenNow blog):

"Sydney Dobell (1824-1874), in Balder, mused of 'hellebore, like a girl-murderess, green-eyed & sick with jealousy, & white with wintry thoughts of poison.'" 

I was warned that hellebore is nearly impossible to cut and paint, since it withers almost immediately. So I found an amazing potted specimen at the nursery down the road and now I'll have another of these beauties for the yard.

I used both Prismacolor and Faber-Castell Polychromos on 11 x 17 Arches hot press watercolor paper. I've made the mistake of using watercolor paper with colored pencil before, and it was a mistake again this time too. Perhaps it's the sizing, but the colored pencil tends to "bead up" or ball up, making little spots of waxy color that are nearly impossible to eradicate. I don't have this trouble on Bristol or other illustration boards.

Using a lot of pressure, assorted stiff tortillons, and nearly an entire colorless blender, I managed to smooth and mix the pigment. Maybe I'll remember next time and just get out the Bristol. It's a heck of a lot cheaper than Arches anyway. 

I have a feeling I'll be revisiting Helleborus again. It probably won't be this year, since these guys are starting to edge past their peak bloom season even now. I'll miss them, green-eyed thoughts and all.

Work vs. Spring

Here in the lower mountains of the Issaquah Alps, it's not really spring yet. This was our first week of sunny days and temperatures above the low forties, though, and it was painful to spend so many hours indoors.




In fact, I cut a few corners on my coursework this week, and while I wish I had some better work to show, in my defense: the peas are in. The French mignonette strawberries are in the cold frame. Half the world is sprouting.



I did manage to eke out a few pieces for class. This oakleaf hydrangea leaf in colored pencil represents one of the last hangers-on from my fall garden. I planted a little dwarf Hydrangea quercifolia last year (I seem to have lost the varietal name, but I'm still looking) and it's done well, well enough to leave me a leaf to draw, anyway.

Hydrangea quercifolia leaf, overwintered
Laura Allen, 2020

The leaf itself didn't last long once I plucked it. I had to work quickly, and not just because I wanted to get back to planting the new clematis. I used a light graphite underdrawing and then Prismacolor and Polychromos colored pencils. I did a light shadow layer first in slate blue, and then started working in earnest, section by section.



The petiole of this plant is quite hairy, and I wasn't sure how to render that in colored pencil. I think I did okay; I at least attained "fuzzy." I hear you can use an embossing tool, which leaves an indention in the paper that your colored pencil will skip over, but I haven't tried it.







Of the other work I did this week, I like this little American holly seedling best. On one of the sunny mornings this week, I took a stroll along our rudimentary trail through the woods. I always try to snip an overhanging branch here or pull up an encroacher there, and this little guy came up entire and intact.

I used watercolor and Micron pen, and he lived in my paint water between sessions.

"You're Such an Hermione"

According to my husband, I'm a bit of an Hermione. I know, I know...I'm a notorious know-it-all and I always do my homework, even the extra credit. If there's a question, my hand's the first in the air.

What can I say? I like classes. I like teaching classes, I like taking classes: it's basically all the same to me. So I'm really enjoying my first week of the online botanical illustration course through Cornell University's professional development department...so far, so good.





I'm taking the third and final class, Advanced Techniques, but of course we always start off with a few basics. Pencil gradation charts, negative space exercises, and colored pencil color wheels.



These two are my favorites. Number three above is a primary color wheel with experiments in mixing neutrals and adding shading. I used Prismacolor Warm Grey on the second wheel, and mixed complementary colors in the center.

Number four to the left is a wheel in what I'd call a minor key. (Not a primary person; I like the more complicated tones.) I mixed complementary colors in the center again, and the second wheel is a blend of the main hue with each of its neighbors.


These were good practice. Colored pencils aren't always easy to blend; I tried colorless blender, a blender pen from my Copic set, torts, stomp, and even white Prismacolor, all with mixed success.



I think I spent the most time on the wheels, but there's also this warm-up drawing in graphite. It was supposed to be a twenty-minute drawing; I spent a bit more time than that but tried not to get too fussy. Capturing the color variations on the skin of the squash was a challenge. Value changes and color mottling added together equals complexity (and fun) in rendering.

Cucurbita pepo var. turbinata
Acorn squash

 And one of the nicest and most unexpected helps of the first week? A writing assignment that will go a long way toward a future artist's statement. And that's no small thing, as anyone who's ever wrestled with artist statements knows.

"...One of the reasons I loved botanical science in the first place is the fascination I have for the specifics of plants. I love the differences between alternate and opposite leaves. I love the difference between the types of bark on trees. I love counting the number of petals, of stamens. I even love the names of things; I collect botanical names like a hoarder.

Every single plant- every leaf, stem, twig, bud, or seed- is utterly unique. There are no two alike, and that amazes me still. Why? Why is there all this incredible uniqueness? I feel that if I could figure out why this is so, I’d understand something really fundamental to the workings of the universe. As it is, it makes me happy to capture as much of that unique character as I can in a drawing or a painting. I want to make a record of just how beautiful even a leafcutter-riddled rhodie bough can be, with its life story written there in its color, its imperfections, its habits of growth...."

(I also wrote a bit about this on my other blog, The Packet Boat.I use that blog for less technical, more noodling sort of posts. For now.)

I'll be back next week with another update. Thanks for stopping in!